


What about that one?

by annagarny



Series: New York State of Mind [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, Morning After, Tony is a jerkass, explain this to medical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-18
Updated: 2012-02-18
Packaged: 2017-10-31 09:14:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/342382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annagarny/pseuds/annagarny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The morning after he shattered a vase in one of Tony Stark's stupid curved hallways, Phil Coulson has to report to medical.</p><p>Slight problem. He's not the only one in there, and some of his injuries can't be explained by the broken vase and upturned hall table.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What about that one?

Phil woke up, slowly. There was something heavy and warm on his chest, and he wasn't in his own room. 

Not that he thought of the room in Tony Stark's house as 'his', but he wasn't in the room he'd gone to sleep in the night before - for a start, this one had a balcony. 

'His' room did not have a balcony.

The events of the previous night (morning? It had been almost four thirty before Clint had lifted him off the sofa and helped him limp up the stairs) came back to him in dribs and drabs - his heels were killing him, the right more than the left. The warm, heavy thing on his chest was breathing and smelled nice... as Phil opened his eyes, the shape resolved itself into the familiar form of Clint Barton's head, resting on his bare chest, one arm snaked around Phil's waist. 

Okay, so that had happened. Phil cautiously slid a hand down his own flank and discovered that yes, he was naked. He trailed his hand over his own stomach and came into contact with Clint's torso, traced his fingers over Clint's hips and confirmed that the other man was similarly attired. There was a bed sheet twisted between them, and as Phil lifted his head he could see that one of Clint's legs was half hanging off the edge of the bed, the other against Phil's own, the sheet trapped between them. 

"Morning." Clint muttered, not lifting his head from where it was resting, his face buried in Phil's sparse chest hair.  
"Morning, yourself. Never would have pegged you for a cuddler."  
"You started it." Clint's voice was muffled as he spoke directly to Phil's chest, turning his face so that the sunshine streaming through the window was less invasive, pulling himself closer to Phil in the same movement.  
"I did?"  
"I woke up an hour ago and you were spooning me, but you snore when you're on your side, so I shoved you over. You kept going back to your side, so I pinned you down."  
"I snore?"  
"Nobody's ever told you that?"  
"It's been a good five years since I've spent an entire night in the same bed as another person, Clint. I don't really sleep when other people are around."  
"You're in your forties and nobody has ever told you that you snore?"  
"Nope."  
"Well, you do."  
"You steal the sheets." Phil countered, sweeping a hand to indicate the fact that Clint had three-quarters of the king-sized sheet twisted around him, leaving Phil with part of one corner barely covering him from navel to knee.  
"Yeah, I know that - wait until winter, we'll have to get two quilts - you're going to hate me when I put my freezing feet onto you in the middle of the night."

Phil felt something lodge in his throat as what Clint had just said was processed by his brain - his hand paused for a moment, where it had been running up and down Clint's back, over his shoulders in large circular motions, before he resumed trailing his fingers over Clint's skin and replied. 

"You're planning on having me in your bed all through winter?" he asked, trying not to let his voice break.  
"Well, you run hot in your sleep. And not my bed, I'm moving into your apartment, it's bigger."  
"Right."  
"I was going to, anyway." Clint told him, still not meeting Phil's eyes, snuggling into his chest with a contented sigh. Phil's mouth quirked in amusement at Clint's brazen assumption.  
"What, even if we hadn't slept together?"  
"I've spent more nights in your apartment over the last year than I have in my own - I was just going to come home with you when we got back to New York and hope you didn't kick me out too fast."  
"You've stayed at my place exactly twice, Clint."  
"I know; I'm always at SHIELD, or out here, or in some random hotel room. I don't even know why I keep up with the rent on that place."

Phil's mind was slowly turning inside-out. He'd gone, in less than twelve hours, from indulging in fantasies where Clint hadn't stopped at stripping his workout pants off and they'd been alone in the training room, to having the subject of said fantasies announcing that he was moving in like it was the most natural thing in the world.

"Just don't mess with the settings on my coffee machine."  
"Won't." Clint was still hugging Phil to him, hadn't lifted his head. The entire conversation had taken place with him speaking into Phil's chest, but he finally lifted his gaze and he was smiling as their eyes met.

"Good morning." Phil greeted him, lifting his hand to smooth Clint's hair back from his forehead, making it stick up.  
"Good morning." Clint lifted himself up and pressed his lips to Phil's, gentle, chaste and delicious. Clint's free hand, the one that had been hugging Phil at his waist, slid up Phil's torso and his thumb found the pulse point on the side of Phil's neck as the kiss deepened. 

Phil was just considering how much time they might have to indulge in a little morning sex, his dick perking up at that thought, when they were rather rudely interrupted by a knock at Clint's door.

"Barton? Have you seen Coulson? JARVIS says he smashed a vase last night and needs to go to Medical, but he's not in his room!"  
Of course it was Tony. Tony, who never got out of bed before ten AM, unless there was a woman in there that he wanted to avoid, was up and about and professing concern for someone other than himself, right when Phil wanted him to be anywhere else so that he could distract Clint from their responsibilities for an hour or so.

"Yeah, Tony, he's in here!" Clint called back before Phil could stop him, and he felt his face heating up as a rather heavy silence made itself heard on the other side of the door.  
"Do I want to know why he's in there?" Tony asked, his voice cracking on the 'why'.  
"Because he tore up one of his feet and it was easier to drag him in here than up two floors to his own room."  
"He's really in there?" Like Tony didn't know exactly where Phil was. JARVIS had probably ratted them out for making out on the couch and leaving the first-aid kit in pieces on the coffee table.  
"Yes, Stark, I'm really in here, and I was asleep!" Phil shouted, and Clint pressed his face back into Phil's chest in an attempt to muffle his laughter at Tony's indignant squawk.  
"Are you two _fucking_?" Tony demanded, thumping on the door to punctuate the question.  
"Right at this moment?"  
"Not right now!" Both Clint and Phil spoke at the same time, before cracking up laughing, Clint digging his fingers into Phil's shoulder in an effort to steady himself as he doubled up.  
"Stop being a pair of pricks! Like you two would ever hook up! Just, dammit! Just get Phil down to Medical in one piece, Barton!" Tony shouted, and they kept on laughing as his stomping footsteps echoed away down the hall.

After a minute, Clint took a deep breath and looked up at Phil, propping his chin on a curled fist planted in the middle of Phil's chest.  
"I think Tony's jealous."  
"I think Tony's going to be a douche all day." Phil countered, lacing his fingers behind his head and leaning back, still sort of laughing as he spoke.  
"Tony's a douche most days."  
"Point."

They lay there for a few minutes, the sheet still twisted between them, Clint looking up at Phil, blinking slowly in the soft morning sunlight, before heaving a sigh and lifting himself up.

"Well, we should probably get you to Medical." Before Phil could object, even move his hands from beneath his head, Clint had slithered out of bed and was sauntering towards the ensuite bathroom, dragging the sheet with him.

So there was Phil Coulson, flat on his back in Clint Barton's bed, naked, hands behind his head and his left ankle crossed over his right, attempting to relieve some of the pain radiating from the cuts in his left heel.

"Can I at least get some pants?" Phil called, but Clint just laughed and disappeared into the bathroom, Phil barely caught the mischievous glimpse of his laughing blue eyes before the door closed.  
"Guess I'll just have to find them myself." Phil muttered, casting his eyes around the room and eventually spotting his own sleeping attire, in a heap next to the door.

He got off of the bed and hobbled to the door, keeping most of his weight on the balls of his feet, and stepped into his pants before looking around for something else to wear - he was hardly going down to Medical with... good god, was that a hickey? He tilted his head as he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the mirrored door of Clint's wardrobe. 

Yep, hickey. And bite marks, bruises and the unmistakeable mark of four blunt fingernails having been dragged down his left flank. Several times.

Definitely needed to find a t-shirt to wear down to Medical.

Thankfully, he and Clint were about the same size (Well, Clint was broader in the shoulders, but that didn't make too much difference) so Phil was able to extract a nondescript black t-shirt from the top drawer of the tallboy and was shrugging into it when the bathroom door opened again and the owner of said t-shirt emerged, the sheet wrapped around him like a toga.

"Oh, you're dressed." If Phil hadn't known better, he'd have thought that the archer sounded disappointed.  
"You heard the boss-man - I have to report to Medical."  
"Yeah, sometime today, not right this minute. And Tony's not the boss-man, Steve is."  
"Well, considering that it feels like I've got hot coals embedded in my feet, I'd rather get down there sooner rather than later."  
Clint sighed.  
"I have to get pants on, too, don't I?"  
"You could just come down wrapped in a sheet, see how they react to it."  
Clint seemed to be considering this for a moment and Phil was forcefully reminded of why he rarely used sarcasm on the radios - Barton had a distressing habit of taking sarcasm to the next, frightening level.  
"No, no. You cannot take me down to Medical in nothing but a sheet. For a start, I'll need to lean on you to walk properly and the damn thing will probably get lost halfway there. Find pants. And a shirt."  
"A shirt?"  
"You're distracting enough when you're clothed. If you drag me through the house shirtless it'll take us an hour and a half to get there because I won't be able to keep my hands to myself. Shirt. Now."  
"Damn, you're possessive."  
"Yes, I am. Shirt."  
"And bossy."  
"I'm your boss. Quit stalling. Shirt and pants. Don't make me order you."  
"Order me?"  
"I was a Marine, Barton."  
"Yeah, and your dick twitches when I call you 'sir', sir."

Phil clapped his hands over his ears and turned away, trying desperately to ignore the jolt that did, indeed, hit his groin as Clint practically purred that magic word, rolling the 'r' off his tongue in a way that surely ought to be illegal.

"Get dressed and help me down to Medical, Clint. I can barely stand up, here." He dropped his voice, allowing some of the pain shooting up his legs to show on his face, and Clint finally relented.

"Fine, but I'm only wearing a shirt so I don't have to explain this." Clint pointed to a distinct set of teeth marks on his own shoulder and Phil tried (and failed) to suppress a grin.  
"Hey, you're lucky I wear a collared shirt in the field, what do you think Medical is going to make of this?" Phil tugged the t-shirt to one side to expose the dark purple hickey at the juncture of his neck and shoulder.  
"They're going to think that you got lucky last night. Come on." Clint had dropped the sheet and tugged on a pair of jeans, Phil's mind was going to incredibly inappropriate places when he registered that Clint was commando in them. He plucked a red v-neck tee out of the top drawer that Phil had taken the black one he was wearing out of and pulled it over his head before sliding an arm around Phil and letting the older man lean against him, taking as much weight off his injured foot as possible so they could get to the stairs.

A two-bed infirmary had been set up down near Tony's workshop in the Malibu house after the fourth time an injured team-member had been closer to Malibu than Manhattan, and there were two nurses and a doctor on loan from the Howard Stark Memorial Hospital whenever there were Avengers in the house.

Somehow, the medical staff never had time to get bored when SHIELD was on the west coast.

 

Clint helped Phil limp down the spiral staircase, tapped in his access code and then the pair hobbled across the cleared path through the workshop, past Bruce's temporary lab in what had once been the kitchenette and through the door marked 'Medical'.

They found Tony, Steve and Natasha already in there, and three heads whipped around as Phil and Clint staggered through the door.

"What the hell happened to you?" Natasha asked, while Tony smirked and Steve turned pink.  
"I smashed a vase and stepped on some of the shards. Clint pulled most of them out, but I think there's still some in there."  
"What? When?"  
"About three this morning. Where's Mark?"  
"He's getting the burn cream for Tony - he set his arm on fire." Steve told them.  
"Told you, Tony, karma's a bitch. That's what you get for laughing at my burn. What about you, Tasha?" Clint half-lifted Phil onto the bed that wasn't occupied by the other three team members, before pulling himself up onto the foot of it, and allowing Phil to drop his injured feet into his lap.  
"Twisted my ankle out running, Liza's gone to get me some ice for it."  
"And you, Steve?" Phil asked, leaning back against the pillow on the bed as Clint leaned over and inspected his feet, seeing the pieces of glass he'd missed the night before in the much better lighting of the infirmary.  
"He witnessed the fire in the kitchen. What are you two doing?" Tony asked them, his eyes narrowing as he twisted on the bed to face Phil and Clint, but was summarily ignored by both of the men on the bed.

Dr Mark Greene came back in and it was a credit to him that he didn't even raise an eyebrow that the population of his 'infirmary' had almost doubled in his absence.  
"What have you done now, Phil?" he asked, handing Steve the burn cream and turning his attention to the heels Clint was inspecting.  
"Smashed a vase and stepped on the pieces."  
"That wasn't very smart." Mark commented, and Phil just raised one eyebrow.  
"I didn't do it on purpose."  
"Who took the pieces out?"  
"I did. But we didn't have much light, so I think I missed some."  
"I'll grab some tweezers, you can get the rest out while I check out Tony's arm."

Tony's eyes were still narrowed at Clint and Phil when Mark came back with a pair of sterile tweezers and a pair of magnifying eyeglasses in a steel kidney dish.  
"These should help." he handed it to Clint and left him to it, turning his attention to Tony's arm as Clint unwrapped the tweezers, slid the glasses on and began to pick the pieces of glass that he could see out of Phil's feet, dropping them with tiny 'ping' noises into the kidney dish.

It was only a few seconds before he apparently got lost in his task, as he did with anything that he concentrated on. Anyone who'd ever been in the field with Hawkeye knew that it was pointless to talk to him when he had his eye to the scope; he got so engrossed in his subjects that he'd respond with grunts and monosyllables to any noise over the radio, and the more tense the situation the less likely he was to talk. 

Tony was, again, watching the two men on the other bed as Mark wrapped his arm up, having applied the antiseptic cream to the shiny mark on his right forearm, and kept the bandages as tight as possible, knowing that Tony needed as little extra bulk as possible beneath his gauntlets.

Phil suddenly hissed and bit his bottom lip as Clint extracted a particularly large piece of glass, and without seeming to think about it, Clint's hand that had been holding his ankle still began to move, rubbing up and down the top of Phil's foot as he pulled the glass from his skin, a soothing gesture that was automatic, and Phil caught himself moving his foot into the touch.

They had completely forgotten that there was anyone in the room, Clint was making small soothing noises as he extracted the last of the shards, tracing his fingers over the incisions in Phil's feet to check for any invisible pieces, and Phil was leaning his head back, eyes closed, letting Clint's hands brush the pain aside.

"It's okay, I'm almost done." Clint murmured, switching his attention to Phil's other foot, and Tony opened his mouth to say something just as Natasha delivered a swift kick to his ankle.

"Ow! Hey!"  
"Shut up. You're patched up, I've got my ice, let's go." she hissed, but that didn't stop him.  
"No- hey, how did you get that?" Tony asked, undeterred by Natasha's glare, possibly because he was avoiding looking at her and was instead focusing on the bruise on the side of Phil's neck.  
"What?" Phil asked, dragging his attention away from Clint's callused palms as they seemed to smooth the pain out of his feet.  
"That, on your neck. You said you kicked over an end table, how did you hurt your shoulder?"  
"I don't know, Stark, it's probably an old bruise."  
"It wasn't there yesterday when we were sparring."  
"Then you probably caused it."  
Tony leaned closer and his eyes widened.  
"Those are teeth marks!"

Phil clenched his jaw to stop himself from, well, he didn't know what. Laughing, shouting, bursting into hysterical, horrified, humiliated tears? 

"Yes, they are teeth marks, in fact, I'd call that a bite mark, Tony." Clint said, his voice low and level.  
"What?" Tony's attention was torn away from the angry red mark on the exposed part of Phil's neck as he turned to look at Clint.  
"I'd say that it's a bite mark. Made in the last four or so hours." Clint told him, still not lifting his gaze from Phil's heel.  
"What?" Tony seemed to have had his vocabulary dramatically reduced by what Clint was telling him.  
"In fact, I'd go so far as to say that it looks like my bite mark, so would you mind not staring at it?"  
"Yours?"  
"As in, made by these." Clint clapped his teeth together with a click, flashed Tony a grin reminiscent of a Great White shark, and turned back to the task at hand without another word. 

Phil was hyperventilating, or he would have been if he hadn't mastered the art of zen many, many years ago. As it was, his heart was hammering so loud he was amazed that nobody else could hear it, and the angry red mark on his neck was quickly being obscured by the blush that was rising from his chest.

"Oh, god dammit. Is everyone in this house getting some but me?" Tony spat, glaring at Natasha who just rolled her eyes.  
"Probably." Natasha told an irate Tony Stark, before catching his elbow and dragging him out of the infirmary. Steve followed them, but paused at the doorway, his own cheeks flaming, head ducked.  
"Uh, well, congratulations?" he asked, and Phil smiled at him, feeling a rush of genuine affection for the first Avenger.  
"Thanks, Steve, but we're not exactly getting married, just boyfriends." he told the Captain, making Steve smile.  
"I hope that isn't too weird for you?" Clint asked, the barest hint of a challenge in his tone.  
"Not at all, things might have changed a lot, but if you're both happy that's all that matters."  
"Then, thanks."  
"I'll try and keep Tony off your case, hey?"  
"Oh, he'll get over it, or I'll bury him in a pile of paperwork that will take him months to get out from under."  
"Let's hope it doesn't come to that." Steve told Phil, smiling, before turning to follow Natasha as she shoved Tony across the workshop towards the stairway that led to the rest of the house.

Clint turned to look Phil in the eye for the first time since he'd propped him up on the bed.

"Boyfriends?" he asked, one eyebrow raised.  
"What was I supposed to say? It's probably the best word to describe it without freaking the poor guy out."  
Clint muttered something under his breath that sounded like "Twelve-year-olds have boyfriends."  
"What?"  
"I said, twelve-year-olds have boyfriends."  
"Okay then, what are you, then?"  
Clint considered this for a moment, before cocking his head to one side with a smug grin.  
"I'm... your man."

Phil didn't bother to try and stop himself from grinning at that.


End file.
